Be warned: You are going to be enraged when you hear this news, imbued with all the populist animalism you can muster and smashing crap all afternoon: Goldman Sachs is cutting some jobs in America and adding 1,000 people in Singapore. Are there even words to describe how much the average American will miss its favorite company?

Large American companies have been moving their working and middle class jobs offshore at a rapid pace for 30 years, which policymakers haven't ever bothered to address, aside from telling people to buy bigger houses. But now that a trickle of high-income jobs from the world's most hated company in our dangerously bloated financial services sector are preparing to migrate Eastward, this is what will finally make Americans snap:

Goldman is so concerned about the potential for criticism that the firm's representatives have been alerting staffers of lawmakers in Washington of the hiring spree in recent weeks as a way to mollify any concerns they may have about previously undisclosed plans to add 1,000 jobs to the firm's Singapore office, according to people in Washington with direct knowledge if the matter. Goldman is concerned about criticism because it is adding those jobs while it is planning what could be a significant retrenchment in its U.S. workforce, these people say. [...]

The jobs in Singapore are likely to be "high-paying, skilled positions in sales and investment banking," the same types that are likely to be cut in the firm's domestic operations, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. This person added that the firm has recently briefed people in Washington about the new overseas jobs because it "is afraid of the fallout" as it plans to slash $1 billion in costs over the next year - a move that will mean a significant, though still undetermined number of layoffs across its operations, though people close to the firm expect the biggest hit to come from the US.

Oh, we'll survive, and perhaps even prosper. Sure, it could be painful if many of the Too Big To Fail multinational megabanks begin to flee to Singapore en masse and credit might not come as cheap as the megabanks' scale have been allowing it to — although the insanely complex casino games they keep engineering are largely for their own amusement now, at this size. But the financial services sector really needs to shrink to a sustainable level that actually makes money by lending to productive industry at some point, no? So why not let Goldman move the entire company to Singapore, if being held hostage to their every whim indefinitely is the other option. We'll point our missiles at them and move on to the next thing. We're getting ahead of ourselves.

Advertisement

And if the jobs of the elites start moving overseas, maybe people in power will begin to notice this fundamental problem and consider taking steps to address it! Just kidding, they'll be on the first plane to Singapore, too. And back here, we'll dance into the night.